INTERNATIONAL
New death sparks protests in Kashmir
Thousands of people poured on to the streets of Indian Kashmir summer capital Srinagar yesterday after another protester died, taking the toll of two months of violence to 64, police said.
The teenager who died in a Srinagar hospital on Wednesday had been admitted on Monday. Witnesses said he had been beaten by federal paramilitary forces during a protest against Indian rule
Police said they were investigating the death that brought hundreds of locals out on the streets of Srinagar's Soura district chanting slogans.
"More and more people are joining them," a resident Farooq Ahmed told AFP over the telephone.
An AFP photographer said police fired several warning shots in the air to disperse the protesters who were carrying the corpse.
The scenic Kashmir region has been under rolling curfews to contain deadly protests that were sparked by the killing June 11 of a teenage student in the Srinagar by a police tear-gas shell.
Most parts of Srinagar were under strict curfew on Wednesday after Muslim separatists opposed to Indian rule in the region called upon the residents to hold anti-India protests across the region.
In Pampore town, 15 kilometres (nine miles), south of Srinagar, a young protester was wounded Wednesday when security forces opened fire to quell a demonstration, police said.
Muslim militants have fought a 20-year insurgency in Indian Kashmir against rule from New Delhi.
The mountainous region, held in part by Pakistan and India but claimed in full by both, has been the cause of two of the three wars the countries have fought since independence from Britain more than half a century ago.
Car bombs kill 46 in Iraq
A series of apparently coordinated car bombs targeting police across Iraq yesterday killed 46 people, including women and children, one day after the US military confirmed a major troop reduction.
The trail of bloodshed started in the capital Baghdad before stretching to the north and south of the country, hitting a total of seven cities and towns in quick succession in tactics that bore the hallmark of al-Qaeda.
In the worst attack, a car bomb at a passport office in Kut, 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killed 20 people, including 15 police, and wounded 90 people, most of them police, Lieutenant Ali Hussein told AFP.
In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern suburb of Qahira, killing 15 people and wounding dozens of others, security and medical officials said.
The attack in the mixed Sunni-Shia neighbourhood took place at around 8 am (0500 GMT), according to an interior ministry official who gave the toll. "The victims include policemen and civilians," he said.
A doctor at Medical City Hospital said they had received the bodies of two women, two children and two police officers, and that 44 other people were receiving treatment.
A series of car bomb attacks in five other towns and cities raised the nationwide toll to 46, and almost 250 wounded.
A spike in unrest over the past two months has triggered concern that Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle security on their own, and with no new government formed in Baghdad since a March 7 general election.
Someone threw me out, says the boy who survived the crash
'Someone dragged me to the emergency exit door and threw me out,' said an eight-year-old survivor of the horrific crash in China's Heilongjiang Province that killed 42 people.
The passenger aircraft overshot the runway and burst into flame while landing at Yichun city's Lindu airport Tuesday night, killing 42 and injuring 54 people. The Embraer E-190 jet crashed at 9.36 p.m.
Said eight-year-old Ji Yifan: 'Someone dragged me to the emergency exit door and threw me out before I realized what was going on.'
The evacuation slide, which was also on fire, broke just as Ji was sliding down.
'I fell to the ground. Again someone dragged me aside,' Xinhua quoted the boy as saying.
A man who was slightly injured in the head remembered strong turbulence after the crew announced the aircraft was about to land. The plane had taken off from Harbin city.
'There were four or five bad turbulence and luggage in the overhead bin were raining down,' he said.
Jimmy Carter in N Korea on rescue mission
Carter, on a rare trip by a Western dignitary, was greeted at an official ceremony at Pyongyang airport by North Korean vice foreign minister and nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said yesterday.
The Nobel peace laureate may leave Pyongyang on Thursday with Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an African-American who was jailed in April for illegally crossing into the North from China, the South's Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported.
He may attend a dinner hosted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il on Wednesday night, the South's Yonhap news agency said.
Washington has neither confirmed nor denied reports of Carter's mission, which comes at a time of high tensions on the peninsula following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March with the loss of 46 lives.
Carter, now 86, made a landmark visit to Pyongyang in 1994 when the United States came close to war with North Korea over its nuclear programme.
NY Mayor backs building of 9/11 mosque
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has backed plans to building a Muslim community centre and mosque near Ground Zero, saying, opposing the project would "compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom."
"If we say that a mosque and community centre should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting and hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam."
"Let me declare that we in New York are Jews and Christians and Muslims, and we always have been. And above all of that, we are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose," he added.
Train hits van in S Africa; kills 9 kids
A driver taking children to school went around a closed railroad crossing gate Wednesday, then collided with an oncoming train that killed at least nine pupils and injured five others, police and witnesses said.
Parents sobbed at the scene as grieving families stood near the completely smashed van that had been transporting at least 13 children at the time of the collision in the Blackheath area of Cape Town.
Cape Town police spokesman Col. Billy Jones said police are investigating a case of homicide against the van driver.
The van driver was seriously injured and rushed to the hospital, police said.
An initial investigation into the crash showed that all protection measures were in place at the crossing, railway officials told the South African Press Association.
"The crossing is protected by road signs, flashing lights and booms, which were confirmed to be in working order," railway officials said in a statement.
Marines find 72 bodies in Mexico
Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.
The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.
"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," The Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor.Lok Shava passes civil nuke bill
India's lower house of parliament yesterday approved a law that opens its nuclear power market to private investment enabling foreign firms to build reactors to supply India's enormous atomic energy market, worth an estimated $150bn.
MPs approved the bill only after the government agreed to triple the amount of compensation for accidents.
The bill is part of a landmark deal with the US in 2008 which granted India access to foreign nuclear technology.
For more than three decades the country had been barred from trade in civilian atomic technology because of its weapons programme and refusal to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Afghan Parliamentary Polls
Record number of women to contest
A record number of female candidates will stand in Afghanistan's parliament elections next month, regardless of the everyday prejudice and death threats from the Taliban.
Poll monitors said women candidates are finding it difficult to campaign outside a few areas, as objections from conservative hardliners is at a high level.
"With voting billed for 18 September, Kabul's streets have been plastered in posters and billboards, many of which show the faces of would-be female MPs in the capital, the number of whom has more than doubled since 2005. However, many of the posters do not stay up long, or get defaced with slashes of bright red ink," reports The Guardian.
"I have told my team that we just have to expect this sort of thing. I cannot run in Herat, because the people say they will not stand a singer woman like me," said a female candidate Fareda Tarana, whose expensive posters had been torn down on Kabul's busy airport road.
Tarana, who came eighth in Afghan Star - the country's Pop Idol in 2005 has been reportedly receiving ten calls everyday from men raising objections to her candidature as an MP.
The calls are in fact more serious for candidates like Najila Angira, who got a call from a Wardak Taliban commander saying he would kill her.
"He had read my biography, which said I lived outside of Afghanistan during the Taliban time and said 'Why are you saying bad things about the Taliban?" said Angira, adding that the Taliban time is finished.
The situation is reported to be worse in more dangerous provinces outside Kabul.
"A female candidate in isolated Ghor province was forced to abandon her campaign and flee to Kabul. The women candidates were "inundated" with late-night threatening calls both from insurgents, political rivals and even some ordinary people," said the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (Fefa) in a recent report.
"Women's campaigns were barely visible in the most insecure provinces in the south and south-east of the country, and female candidates complained of government indifference to their security concerns," the Fefa added in its report.
Australian PM contenders promise no early polls
The contenders to become Australia's next prime minister each promised yesterday to govern for a full term if three key independent lawmakers support their competing parties to form an administration after indecisive elections.
The independents are likely to decide whether Julia Gillard's Labor Party or opposition leader Tony Abbott's Liberal Party-led coalition forms a government after elections failed to give any party a majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives for the first time in 70 years.
Independents Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter opened negotiations with the two leaders on Wednesday and presented each with wish lists including a demand for a pledge to govern for the full three years. A prime minister might be tempted to call early elections as soon as opinion polls showed a chance of winning a majority.
Julia qualified her pledge, saying that a by-election due to a government lawmaker becoming sick could be enough to bring down a minority administration.
"If I was the incoming prime minister, out of this process, to the extent that I could control it, my guarantee to go full term is unequivocal," Julia told reporters.
Conservative opposition leader Abbott said he told the independents "there would be no election prior to August 2013, should I become prime minister."
The independents say their top demand is for details of how much the competing election promises would cost the nation in areas including telecommunications, health and education.
Julia said she was inclined to release what costings were available, and was seeking advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. But as caretaker prime minister, she would also need Abbott's authority to release such budget information. Abbott said he wanted to see Julia's advice before agreeing.
Abbott has not agreed to the independents' request that he submit his election promises to the Treasury Department to be officially costed. But he said the independents were welcome to see calculations by a private accounting firm commissioned by his party.
Zardari under vitriolic attack from US, UK media
Under attack from various quarters in the country for his government's slow response to the catastrophic floods, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's apparent failure to handle the crisis has also earned him criticism from the US media.
Both print and electronic media in America have launched a scornful attack on Zardari, blasting him for taking a trip to France and Britain when the massive floods were unfolding, and described him as an ineffectual leader.
Though Zardari, through his column in The Wall Street Journal last week, had tried to justify his foreign trip, but even that has not stopped columnists and analysts from slamming the President.
"Pakistan's cataclysmic floods have left the government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad isolated and despised by the public. The government's response to the inundations has been feeble and inept," prominent columnist, Eric Margolis, wrote in The Huffington Post.
"Most of the rescue operations were conducted by the military, which still remains popular. Expect accusations that aid money is being stolen by corrupt government officials," Margolis added.
He pointed out that people of Pakistan are furious with Zardari for enjoying a foreign trip while his countrymen were struggling to wade through the raging flood waters.
"Pakistanis were furious at Zardari for swanning around Europe while over a third of the nation was drowning. Pakistan's parliament has stripped Zardari, whose popularity is at minus zero, of most of his important powers, handing them over to the amiable but weak prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, another compliant US ally," the column said.
US makes aid warning against Pakistan
Pakistan will have to demonstrate it can spend relief funds transparently and well if it wants more help in rebuilding after its massive floods, the US aid chief said, as the United Nations appealed urgently for more helicopters to ferry aid to around 800,000 stranded people.
America has been the most generous contributor to the flood aid, rushing in emergency assistance to support a vital ally in the war against al-Qaeda and Taliban. But rebuilding homes, roads, livelihoods and vital infrastructure will cost billions of dollars, and there are questions over who will pay.
The Pakistan government says about $800 million in emergency aid has been committed or pledged so far. But there are concerns internationally about how the money will be spent by the government, which has a reputation for inefficiency and corruption.
Rajiv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said the United States would continue to urge nations to donate.
"We are going to work at it, but these are tough economic times around the world and it will require a demonstration of real transparency and accountability and that resources spent in Pakistan get results," he said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday.
The floods began almost a month ago with the onset of the monsoon and have ravaged a massive swath of the country, from the mountainous north through to its agricultural heartland. More than 8 million people are in need of emergency assistance.
Some of the routes along which trucks carrying supplies to US and Nato troops in neighbouring Afghanistan travel have also been affected by the floods. A spokesman for international forces in Afghanistan said supplies had been slowed down but there had been no impact on operations.
The United Nations said some 800,000 people had been cut off by the floods and were only accessible by air, a measure of the scale of the disaster. It said 40 more heavy-lift helicopters were urgently needed.
The US military has dispatched 19 choppers so far.
Suu Kyi asks supporters to boycott polls
Myanmar's pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has urged her supporters not to vote in this year's general election, opposition sources said yesterday.
Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party have boycotted the general election scheduled Nov 7 to protest regulations passed by Myanmar's junta that seemed designed to bar the Nobel laureate and her followers from the polls.
The regulations ban anyone currently serving prison terms from membership of political parties seeking to contest the polls.
Suu Kyi is serving an 18-month house detention term which is expected to expire in late November, after the election.
NLD spokesman Nyan Win met with Suu Kyi Tuesday to seek her views on the pending polls.
Nyan Win told a press conference that when asked whom her supporters should vote for at the polls, Suu Kyi answered: 'It is clear. Do not vote.'
Although the NLD has chosen not to contest the polls, a breakaway faction, called the National Democratic Force, has entered the race. Their leaders were hoping for backing from Suu Kyi, sources said.
About 40 parties have been allowed to contest the polls, which few expect to be free and fair as promised by the junta.
Parties complain that they have been given insufficient time to prepare and the registration fee, at $500 per candidate, is onerous in a country where the per capita income is less than $600 a year.
Afghan deadline giving enemy sustenance
A senior US general has warned President Barack Obama's deadline to begin pulling troops out of Afghanistan is encouraging the Taliban.
US General James Conway, head of the US Marine Corps, said the deadline was "giving our enemy sustenance".
Gen Conway warned that US forces in southern Afghanistan will likely have to stay in place for several years.
His comments are likely to fuel debate over US strategy in Afghanistan and Mr Obama's July 2011 withdrawal date.
US administration officials say privately they are not surprised to hear the comments from the general, who, correspondents say, has typical US Marine Corps bluntness - and is also about to retire.
'INTERCEPTED COMMUNICATIONS'
Gen Conway, who just returned from Afghanistan, said he is concerned the date may signal to the Taliban that the US was preparing to wind down the war.
"In some ways we think right now it's probably giving our enemy sustenance. We think that he may be saying to himself, in fact we've intercepted communications that say, 'Hey, we only have to hold out for so long,'" Gen Conway told a Pentagon news conference.
"I honestly think it will be a few years before conditions on the ground are such that turnover will be possible for us," he said of Marines in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
The BBC's Nick Childs says the statements made by the general highlight the manner in which American political and military leaders continue to differ about how fast security can be handed over to the Afghan authorities.
General Conway said that Afghan units "somewhere" may be able to take the lead in security, but not in the south, which the general called the "birthplace" of the Taliban insurgency.
India wants Dubai to extradite 4
India has asked the United Arab Emirates to extradite four Mexican and Venezuelan suspects in the brazen theft of 300 diamonds worth more than $1.4 million at a major jewellery show, police said yesterday.
Security footage showed the theft taking place late Monday at the India International Jewellery Show, but authorities zeroed in on the suspects three men and one woman after they had left on a flight from Mumbai where the show was held.
The footage showed the men kept workers at the stall busy as the woman put a box containing the diamonds into her bag, police said.
In Dubai, a police official said the arrests followed the Interpol alert for the suspects, who were taken into custody moments after an Emirates flight from Mumbai landed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under standing rules for briefing the media.
Indian parliament debates civil nuke bill
India's parliament has begun debating a controversial draft law aimed at opening up its civilian nuclear power industry to private investment.
The long-delayed bill will enable foreign firms to build reactors to supply India's atomic energy market, worth an estimated $150bn (£97bn).
The cabinet approved the plan last week amid wrangling with the opposition.
The bill sets out liabilities of firms in case of accidents, and puts in place a framework for compensation claims.
Correspondents say they expect parliament to pass the bill.
The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill was introduced in parliament on Wednesday by junior science and technology minister Prithviraj Chavan.
China Plane Crash
Flight recorder found
The flight recorder from a plane that crashed in China has been found, the state news agency Xinhua said.
At least 42 people were killed after the passenger plane crash-landed in the northern province of Heilongjiang.
Rescuers searched through the wreckage of the plane, which had broken in two, as Chinese state television began broadcasting the stories of survivors.
These described the panic and terror as the plane tried, but failed, to land safely near the city of Yichun.
"The plane really started to jolt in a scary way - the plane jolted five or six times very strongly," one male survivor told China Central Television from his hospital bed.
A second male survivor told CCTV that he felt a "big jolt" as the plane was coming in to land and heard "big crashes - bam bam bam".
"After we stopped, the people in the back were panicking and rushed to the front," another man told CCTV.
"We were trying to open the (emergency exits) but they wouldn't open. Then the smoke came in ... within two or three minutes or even a minute, we couldn't breathe. I knew something bad was going to happen," he said.
The vice mayor of Yichun, Wang Xuemei, told CCTV that of the 54 injured, three were in critical condition.
The pilot was one of the survivors of the crash but has not been able to talk yet due to heavy facial injuries.
Xinhua reported that families of the victims waited anxiously at Yichun's Lindu airport. Five of those on board were children but their fate remains unclear.
The Henan Airlines aircraft, with 91 passengers on board and five crew, burst into flames after overshooting the runway at Yichun City's airport.
No to longer settlement slowdown
Says Israeli FM
Israel's foreign minister says it's unacceptable to extend the country's West Bank settlement slowdown even as Mideast peace talks get under way.Avigdor Lieberman says continued restrictions on construction would "punish" Israelis living in the settlements.
Lieberman suggested yesterday on Israel Radio that Israel resume construction in major settlement blocs expected to remain in Israeli hands under a future peace deal, while limiting building elsewhere.
Israeli settlers warned yesterday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face his "day of judgment" if he caves in to pressure to further limit settlement construction in the West Bank.
"This is not a time to mince words as this is literally a day of judgment for our prime minister and government," said Naftali Bennett, head of Yesha, the main association of settlers in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.
Yesha warned in a letter to Netanyahu of "serious diplomatic and political implications" if he reneges on his promise to resume issuing building permits for settler homes when a partial, 10-month moratorium ends on September 26.
A 10-month moratorium on most West Bank construction expires Sept 26. Israel is under pressure from the US to extend the slowdown.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not said what he will do. If he resumes construction, the Palestinians say they will walk away from peace talks slated to start next week.
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